This era was consumed by issues of police brutality, gentrification, AIDS, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive rights, Israel foreign policy and military actions, and education and labor relations.
Many of the protesters’ concerns are still making headlines news of today but more important than that is to “Photographing these events for the historical record of them".
Photographing protests naturally connects you to looking at what is happening at the same time in the field of activism and social movements.
Are you just taking street photos, or do you have another job here? Are you a street photographer or an activist?
It's a great question to ask every street photographer and a big mystery that is related to the medium of street shooting.
When you take part in a huge protest or in a social revolution you basically take part in creating the history, moreover you take pictures of it, how amazing is that thought.
Taking photos of social movements or a rally in the streets and later on editing them with text and deep thinking about it will eventually create a future narrative of a triumph, heroic stand and collectivist vision of society.
All street photographers develop their own aesthetic strategies, and this "new social agent" explicitly reflects on its own visual forms from the beginning of the nineties. I want to introduce the idea that, in a sense, alongside the ‘social turn’ of art, there is also a certain ‘artistic’ or ‘creative turn’ of activism. Symbolic gestures, performative actions, visual language and aesthetic creativity have become a common trait of street photography, art and social activism.
As a street photographer I always examine what makes images of resistance resonate so loudly.
I explore the relationship of photography to protest and it's donation to society during my work in streets of my country and my city.
The series is trying to capture the different ways in which protests can manifest: from people on the streets exercising their objection, the people's voice, use of kids in the rally, body language and my photos.
Portraits of individuals, both friends and unknown, whose acts of resistance, however small or epic, were immortalized in a photograph, and adopted by communities as representative of something meaningful to their cause.
Another idea is that when you're a street photographer that shows yourself during protest or a rally and being Captured on camera and with, your individual acts of defiance using your frames, have gone on sometimes to become symbolic of the movement they represent .
In my opinion street photography has a strong connection with your inner voice using protest as a tool of creating a symbol of standing up to power.
Street photography for me has become similarly emblematic as a symbol of peaceful resistance.
What streets do you photograph? “Whose Streets? Our Streets!
